Balanced on the Blade's Edge (Dragon Blood Book 1) by Lindsay Buroker

Author:Lindsay Buroker [Buroker, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: General Fiction
Published: 2014-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

“Sir?” came a distant call.

Ridge left Sardelle—he had been smashing her anyway—and returned to the front of the cave, grunting as his foot caught on rock. Their shelter lacked a flat floor. “We’re fine, Rav,” he called back. “Everyone there make it?”

“We’re all in, but, uhm, the owl… it’s sitting out there waiting in a tree branch.”

“With luck, it’ll get bored of waiting and leave.”

The soldier’s “Yes, sir” sounded encouraged, but the follow-up of, “What if it doesn’t?” was a little more plaintive.

“We’ll figure it out in the morning,” Ridge called. Dropping his voice, he asked, “Owls are nocturnal, right?”

“Regular owls, yes,” Sardelle said. “I’m less certain about magical ones.”

Ridge digested that. “So it is magical. I didn’t think it could be natural, but I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

After a pause, Sardelle asked, “It wasn’t in the operations manual?”

“No.”

“I’m guessing it belonged to someone on that ship.”

“A ship that is now free to go back and harass the fort without me there.” Ridge slapped the wall with his hand. Damned fool’s errand, that’s what this had been. He had lost a man, and now the fort might be in danger again.

“I’m sorry,” Sardelle said softly.

“Not your fault.” Ridge hadn’t figured out yet why she had come out here—or how in all the levels of all the hells she had managed to sneak out past his men—but she hadn’t been a burden. She had pushed herself to keep up and hadn’t complained about the pace. She had even been right about the cave. He snorted. Brackenforth Fissures. He would have to look that up when he got back to the fort—if there was a fort to return to. He growled at himself. All this because he had wanted the airship. What had he thought would happen? That the crew would all be dead, and he could simply salvage it for himself? At the least, he had hoped they wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight. But that ship had been well manned, and it was uncanny how quickly the Cofah had repaired it. He wondered…

“So if someone on that ship has a giant magical owl, does that then mean that said person has magical powers of his own?” Ridge didn’t know when he had started to think of Sardelle as his guide to all things arcane, but she had read at least one book on the topic, and that was one more book than he had read.

“His or her own, yes,” Sardelle said. “It would take someone with an alarming amount of power to command such a beast.” Concern laced her words. Thus far, she had faced everything with a calm demeanor. This was the first time she had sounded worried.

And that worried him. What he had assumed was a simple Cofah scouting mission looked like it was much more. A well-equipped ship that had apparently come with the mission to bury the fort—and the mining operation—beneath snow and rock.

Frigid wind whistled through the canyon. It was going to be a stormy night.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.